This is the city: Los Angeles, California. I work here. I'm an ex-mayor. Los Angeles is a magnet for people from all over the world. Some of them run for public office. Inevitably some of them stray from the golden rule and rule for those that have the gold. That's when I go to work. My name is Yorty. I'm a dead pol.

What does County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas have to hide, especially from Federal Investigators and the Los Angeles Times?

But first, a flashback moment.

Controversy surrounding a powerful Los Angeles labor leader threatened Thursday to alter the landscape beneath the county's hottest political race, which has been fueled by record amounts of union spending.

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors candidate Bernard C. Parks, who trailed in the June primary, challenged opponent Mark Ridley-Thomas to return more than $4.5 million raised on his behalf by a labor alliance that included beleaguered union leader Tyrone Freeman.

Parks, a Los Angeles city councilman, also noted that county officials have accused Freeman's local of raising more than $5 million in illegitimate union dues from low-wage home healthcare workers, a charge that union attorneys have flatly denied.

That was then, this is today from LA Times Investigative Reporter Paul Pringle.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas has declined to release any records of communications between his office and a longtime associate who has been employed by corporations that do millions of dollars of business with the county and a rail project that Ridley-Thomas helps oversee.

Ridley-Thomas similarly rejected Times requests for any e-mails, memos and letters involving the companies that hired the associate, Cynthia McClain-Hill, earlier this year.

The Times has reported that federal authorities have questioned people about Ridley-Thomas' ties to McClain-Hill and her employment with a joint venture managed by Flatiron Construction, which is building the $862-million, taxpayer-funded Expo Line light rail train. McClain-Hill, a lawyer who owns a lobbyist firm and has contributed thousands of dollars to Ridley-Thomas' campaigns, also works for Unisys Corp., which provides computer services to the county. Under the California Public Records Act, The Times sought more than nine months of records, including copies of the supervisor's appointment calendar and telephone bills.

The Feds are looking at Supervisor Ridley-Thomas? Wonder why?

The federal queries grew out of a U.S. Labor Department and FBI investigation into alleged corruption within the Service Employees International Union, a key financial backer of Ridley-Thomas' election campaign last year, people familiar with the probe say.

The Project Acorn event was at the headquarters of Local 721 of the Service Employees Union. It hadn�t started so I walked around the Virgil Avenue neighborhood, a few miles west of downtown. It�s a neighborhood of apartments, probably affordable for working families (if they double up) but they will be out of range if building ever resumes. At the union hall, I ran into Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, and interviewed him on the closed Martin Luther King Jr. hospital for a story I plan to do for LA Observed on his race with Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks. Then I introduced both Mama Hill and a short video about her and about how she faced foreclosure.

Too bad that Boyarsky was fixated on the outcome of his agenda missive, thus missing the chance to get to the bottom of now Supervisor Ridley-Thomas dubious ties to SEIU, but then this is from the noted denier of "Raineygate".

OTHER NEWS:

** Less than one week from being sworn in as former Chief Bill Bratton's "designated heir" in the role of City of Los Angeles "Top Cop", Chief Charlie Beck announces a shake up of his command staff.

Beck, who was confirmed as chief by the City Council last Tuesday, promoted Deputy Chief Michel Moore to become one of the LAPD's three assistant chiefs and assigned him to a newly created post in charge of Special Services, according to an announcement released Monday.

In his new post, Moore will oversee an array of specialized operations that, until now, have been run separately, including the agency's Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, the elite Metropolitan Division and the Detective Bureau.

To make room for Moore, Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, who for several years has been the second-highest-ranking person in the department, dropped one rank to deputy chief and will take on a new position as chief of detectives.

** Talk about stimulating your political appetite. The City Council will resume talks Tuesday on a proposed medical marijuana ordinance that would let dispensaries sell pot to qualified patients -- even though the city attorney and district attorney insist such transactions would be illegal.

The City Council will consider amending the fifth draft (in how many flippin years!?) of the proposed ordinance submitted by the city attorney. Among the three dozen amendments proposed to the measure are:

-- only 70 collectives would be allowed citywide, or one medical marijuana facility per 57,000 residents, each chosen via a blind random drawing;link here for the rest.

29 Comments:

Anonymous said:

MY morning observation is that you practical REPRINT the entire article from the Times, and use a tiny bit of space for the other stories. Perhaps you can just provide a one sentence introduction, and a link, and some commentary that isn't a whole fucking book length to scroll past before we can click on the link comment.

Four paragraphs out of about 20 does not constitute a "full reprint". Second, it is fact that Tyrone Freeman's SEIU 6434 jacked up due from about $12 per month to over $30, then were force to refund their members. Third, I think that you need to repair your "inflated love toy", so that you can be more cheerful in the AM.

One Who Knows said... The grand jury investigation is about an alleged illegal raise of dues to try to restore the union's coffers.

They gave $4,000,000 to Mark Ridley Thomas by way of an Independant Expenditure in the primary election and when he didn't win outright, they need another $4,000,000 to back him in the general election in November.

This is all on the backs of his membership that cannot afford $35.00 each month dues to contribute to a candidate.

The allegations are that the raise in dues is illegal; the investigation is ongoing.

Beck is an asshole!! A corrupt bastard that is already taking his directions from the Mayor. He doesn't have the balls to be a man and stand up himself. By demoting to popular Chief's he shows he is insecure and afraid the rank and file really liked them and hate him. No one knows who the hell Beck is and now they are scrambling inviting anyone who wants to attend a free swearing in next week to go. Just like Antonio has to bus people in to his events this is what is happening at the swearing in for dumb ass Beck. He has no stature as a man. He's a sick puppy who doesn't know what he's doing. People are pissed off at these decisions.

Taking about “gates” there is one more “gates” across the nation. There is a story about Global Warming that brings out into the open the lies we been fed by Al Gore and “the scientists” that have been supporting his lies. Al Gore is going to make billions of dollars if this bill is approved next month. Thanks to some hackers that broke into their computer the truth is out. At www.prisonplanet.com there is a lot of information about the e-mails and documents that were discovered.

CM Perry has included in her recoupment mission the calculation that the police, parking and traffic control officers had to put in hours for their jobs anyway.

So you see she's headed down the road to some deep discounts and the result will be something to please AEG and make it look like she's the big peacemaker.

All CMs deal with other people's money as freely as if it was Monopoly money so that trying to squeeze anything out of the "buddy" AEG organization is just window dressing, nothing more.

The second feature on CMs handling of money is that if the expenditure is made, they don't really have a track record of pursuit of reimbursement. That's for a direct expenditure like a lot of the bad histories with "non-profits" including gang intervention groups and projects like the recent "Children's Museum" that's in bankruptcy.

So the AEG situation is not direct payment that puts "recovery" on an even more remote level than most other items.

Besides, there's a lot of potential for campaign dollars to either come forth in the future or be totally shut off, depending on how this "negotiation" goes. So what do you expect to come out?

I'd say the free ride turns into a "nominal donation" for this one, and that will be the City's "recovery."

I’ll be keeping an eye on the Board of Supervisors in the coming weeks. Recently, they reissued an RFP for vendor services to operate the county’s GAIN case management services (a welfare-to-work program). I expect the same two companies will submit proposals as last year – incumbent Maximus Inc. and Policy Studies Inc. (PSI).

Maximus has maintained its contract with the county for many years now, but its cost to the taxpayers keeps skyrocketing. If the new bids resemble those from last year, we can expect that the Maximus bid will cost taxpayers almost a million dollars more than PSI’s.

What’s more, Maximus has a track record of poor performance. Under its latest three year contract, Maximus has been cited repeatedly for failing to meet required goals in 5 of 8 categories (according to the LA Times). Last year, the Department of Public Social Services favored PSI based on scoring done on the two companies by a neutral third party. PSI scored 9,082 out of 9,616 possible points in the procurement process, whereas Maximus scored 7,824 of 9,616. PSI won by a 13% margin on technical score and also submitted the lowest bid, which was 6% cheaper.

Even worse, Maximus has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to buy the support of the Board of Supervisors through lobbying and campaign donations.

I, for one, am grateful that the BOS reissued the RFP and am confident they will select the right choice for LA. In these tough economic times, we need our local elected officials to scrutinize how every tax dollar is being spent and eliminate waste wherever possible. I hope we see a changing of the guard here very soon.

I live near a drug dealer, and seriously don't think the cops could ever protect me enough from the gang-looking guys to get me to snitch. I don't like the dealing, but, I also like to remain alive.

I'm all for the medical pot or whatever they call it. These semi-legal outlets take a lot of the drug trade out of the residential zones, and that's a good thing. They also undercut the street weed by selling at a lower price.

Nowadays, fewer people come by to score. My disapproving stares seem to have a greater effect when there are better, cheaper ways to buy weed.

Congratulations Los Angeles. You now have not only a corrupt city council group, a corrupt Mayor, corrupt city departments now with Chief "Tainted" Beck you now have a corrupt police dept. going back to the old days of LAPD. Rank and file are going to wave and smile just like they did with Bitter Bernie. They are going to send Beck a message for screwing around with morale and demoting the most liked command person with LAPD. Beck has no honor, shame, class or ethics and is a Parks bun boy.

The attacks on Beck are unfair, you don't have any idea what's going on with him and McDonnell. Anyway putting McDonnell in HIS old job is not that bad unless you want Beck to say his old job was lousy? Head of detectives and the DNA rape kit issue is a high-profile job which McDonnell may need to get hands-on experience before he moves back up.

I'm sure Beck isn't taking any crap from the Mayor, Antonio needs him and now Antonio has to find some other way to get PR. He was even at the opening of the Pershing Square Ice Rink, had himself surrounded b some kids for a photo op, the only "safe" constituents left it seems. It did look like he was trying too hard to find a positive photo op.

What's with him coming out to the Daily News this morning that he agrees with Cooley, Trutanich and Essel on their hardline view that all pot sales are illegal? That's throwing his homies Reyes, Huizar under the bus along with Koretz who maybe isn't caving in to him.

They know if they stick to that hardline the city will be hit with a huge class action suit it won't win, another ego issue for Cooley- Trutanich. Something's fishy here.

The Daily News comments from even conservative regulars are saying it's just so Villar can give the pot business back to his Mexican homies in the drug cartels - he can't win whatever he does, people just don't trust him. Beck must be smart enough to play along where it suits his purposes but only so far.

DUHHHHHH!!!!!! Dumb ass weak Mayor after all these months wants to get in on the photo ops and publicity. He can thank his buddies Reyes and Huizar for allowing the 1,000 medical marijuana shops to flourish in Los Angeles.....Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa weighed in Tuesday on the city's medical marijuana controversy, saying he wants the City Council to pass a measure that bans pot sales at clinics. "I am concerned about the legality of these operations," Villaraigosa said in an interview. "I think the district attorney, and what my attorneys tell me, are the same thing. That the sale of marijuana is illegal."

Funny how Jan Perry is now trying to get her campaign contributor (AEG) to pay the costs of the Michael Jackson fiasco. A few months ago, she was protecting AEG from any responsibility for causing the taxpayers to foot the bill for their commercial promotion of "This Is It."

Perry has stated that Trutanich's earlier comments about AEG's conduct and his on-going investigation into "possible criminal aspects" are hampering her attempts to get AEG to cough up the greenbacks.AEG spokeshole, Tim LIEweckie, has challenged Trutanich to "put up or shut up" and purely coincidentally, has said he won't cough up a dime until Trutanich drops the criminal investigation and apologizes.

Does anyone here see the "possible" connection between LIEweckie's statement and Hamburger Jan's statement?Is Jan Perry trying to get AEG some kind of break here, so that they can write a check and make the whole thing go away?

Or is Jan Perry just trying to cover up her own involvement in authorizing the multi-million dollar waste of city money when she was left in charge of LA while the Mayor and Garcetti were out of town.

Surly a criminal investigation would reveal exactly what Jan Perry said to LAPD and AEG. We don't know what that is, but we do know that under Perry's watch, 4,000 LAPD officers were dispatched to hype up the charade that was a commercial for AEG.

Yes, it would suit Jan Perry for the whole ugly mess to be swept under the carpet. Unfortunately for Jan Perry, Trutanich has no intention of playing ball.

Say "Bye Bye" to your Mayoral hopes Jan Perry, when you're termed out in 2013 you'll be lucky to get a job anywhere - AEG won't need you anymore and you'll have no taxpayer paychecks to rely on. When was the last time you had a real job? Maybe you should see if Burger King is hiring burger flippers? Oh, maybe not.

Beck = dirty cop Parks bun boy and now Mayor lapdog. No one is stupid not to know Beck is tainted and Bratton had the selection process FIXED. It was all over the internet so shut the hell up you Beck groupie